Surveillance 101 With Eric O’Neill

One advantage of living a couple of hours from Washington, D.C., is that you can easily drive there for events. Several weeks ago, I saw a notice for this event.

Eric O’Neill is best known as the FBI agent who played a major role in the arrest of Robert Hanssen. We’d seen the 2007 movie Breach, and my wife read his book Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America’s First Cyber Spy. We’ve taken several spy walks in D.C. and this sounded like a good time. It was.

Eric gave us an assignment, which was to locate and follow a spy (ghosting) who was going to meet an Unsub (unknown subject) and see if an exchange was made at a drop site. There were 11 people and we split into groups of two and made reports via cell phones. It was fun in spite of some technical difficulties (my wife’s phone dropped the call). Then, we had a debriefing and got to talk with Eric.

We asked Eric if Hanssen’s anti-communism and staunch Catholicism was real or just cover. He thought it was, but Hanssen highly compartmentalized his life. Eric said that Chris Cooper, who played Hanssen in the movie, spent a lot of time with him trying to figure out how to play the role. He did an excellent job.

The movie starts with his arrest so there’s no suspense. It’s similar to Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard, which begin at the end. The character development and human interaction are what makes these movies work. I highly recommend attending this event if you’re in the area. The International Spy Museum offers it about once a year.